After today, the election is over.Let’s breathe in and breathe out.

Ah, didn’t that feel nice?

Who did/are you going to vote for? Wait, stop, I really don’t want to know, and I’m not going to tell you who I voted for either.

All that matters now is that, starting tomorrow, we will finally be in the home stretch of President George W. Bush’s term and welcome all this change we’ve been hearing so much about.

What exactly will change — no matter who wins today — is hard to say at this point. Change for our generation will come in forms different from any other generation.

What exactly is that direction? It’s hard to say what the future holds for young people. Our lives — more than we realize — are directly affected by powers greater than us.

Our power to determine our own destiny is limited.

Sure, in the ‘80s and ‘90s, we sat in front of the television and watched Nickelodeon. Our minds were infiltrated with commercials about how we are all individuals and the sky is the limit. Perhaps, you called in for Nickelodeon’s “The Big Help,” with the burgeoning idea that you, as a child, could implement real change by yourself.

Self-reliance is a good thing, but it comes with a cost.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Jean M. Twenge’s book “Generation Me,” which discusses the generational traits of anyone born in the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s.

Our generation, in contrast to our parent’s generation, has been pushed to believe in ourselves as individuals. On the other hand, our parent’s generation did everything in groups, like protesting, and did not discover “self” until young adulthood.

Our individuality isn’t a bad thing. We are, after all, an extremely confident generation. The concept of self-importance is an interesting point to consider.

Twenge notes that people our age “have been raised to aim for the stars at a time when it is more difficult than ever to get into college, find a good job and afford a house.” As a result, there is a great amount of anxiety among our age group and reasonably so.

So, what are we to do?

We can start by learning about ourselves and how we can fix the problems previous generations have laid out for us to solve.

Upcoming years will hold problems that no single individual can solve, but if we work together we can we can. The U.S. has over a more than $10 trillion trade deficit, the state of our environment is deteriorating at an alarming rate, and it is becoming harder and harder for Americans to earn enough money to support their families.

These are problems that neither Sen. John McCain nor Sen. Barack Obama can solve entirely by themselves. It will take us to make sure appropriate solutions are found.

Young people, we may have to give up the Hollywood hills idealistic version of our lives in order to correct the problems that plague our nation, but, let’s face it, that was never reality to begin with.

This isn’t the time to focus on ourselves, despite our generation’s tendency to do so. It’s time to focus on what we as a nation united can do together.

There are not — and should not be – two Americas. We are all facing these problems together and we can only solve them if we work together.

Katie J. Parker is a journalism senior.